Good News in History, March 9

21 years ago today, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II made a symbolic visit to Northern Ireland, celebrating the peace that had been created one year earlier by a ceasefire between the IRA and Loyalists. Two years later, the Good Friday peace agreement would end decades of bloodshed. (1995)

MORE Good News on this Date:

Congress launched President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal in a special session, beginning its 100 days of legislating (1933)

CBS television aired its See It Now episode, a critical report on Senator Joseph McCarthy, produced by Edward R. Murrow, which led to the end of the McCarthy Communist witch hunt (1954)

The first Ford Mustang rolled off the assembly line at Ford Motor Company, the first sports car produced for a mass market (1964)

Dr. Antonia Novello was sworn in as Surgeon General of the United States, the first female and Hispanic American to serve in that position (1990)

The U.S. ban on using federal dollars for embryonic stem cell research was lifted (2009)

Realizing the possibility that innocent men could be unjustly killed, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn abolished the death penalty in his state and commuted the sentences of all remaining death row inmates (2011)

Polish mountaineers Adam Bielecki and Janusz Gołąb made the first winter ascent of Gasherbrum I (or K5), the 11th highest peak on Earth, located on the Pakistan-China border (2012)